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That's not at all obvious. Tibetans have a very different life style and nutrition than, for instance, westerners.
by kaeluka 10y ago
That's not at all obvious. Tibetans have a very different life style and nutrition than, for instance, westerners.
- coldtea 10y agoWhich is irrelevant, as it only speaks of total risk. If butter was bad, it would be bad for them too, in a controlled study against not butter eating Tibetans, regardless if they all run 10k miles per day and eat only vegetables.
- Xdafjgneoiwe 10y agoIf the sample size was large enough and you could factor our everything else, then yes. I don't think anything like this was done, though. What exactly is your point, then?
- kaeluka 10y ago+1 Additionally, even if you could and would factor out everything else, "obvious" would hardly be the right word to use.
- coldtea 10y agoThat the lifestyle difference is irrelevant since any study that measures the impact of a food in health should control for it.
- tomrod 10y agoIt can't be controlled for if there is no variation in the population. At that point it becomes a fixed effect--a population-specific intercept, as it were--and the only way to net that out would be through a difference-in-difference type study.
- coldtea 10y ago>It can't be controlled for if there is no variation in the population. You think there are no Tibetans who don't exercise much and don't eat much vegetables either?
- tomrod 10y agoDepends. The external validity may be questionable due to the height of the Tibetan plateau, epigenetic expression that is potentially common in the nation, or any number of other factors. In other words, conditional randomization is not true randomization required. However, the grandparent comment I understood to be relevant to dietary factors.